We buy several thousand glowsticks to hand out, just in case. We blow up thousands of balloons, including thirty-five silver monsters, big as small cars. The staging company installs bubble-blowing machines. Special-effects lighting. The DJ is booked. The invitations go out, and we're set.

On the last day of the twentieth century, I'm on the sidewalk with a long pole, changing the marquee to read "Special Secret Party Here Tonight," and an old woman in a cloth coat asks if Fight Club has ended its run.

And I'm thinking, In your dreams. I'm thinking, Not your cup of tea, lady?

She's tiny in her coat and old-lady low heels, and she says, "I've heard very good things about it. I was really wanting to see it."

This won't be my last surprise of the century.

Some things you can't anticipate. When the huge silver balloons bounce out of the balcony, they land in everyone's dinner. From then on, they're lasagna and salad-covered blimps, bouncing against everyone, picking up and smearing food on everything they touch. Bottles and wineglasses fall and break, and the moment a six-foot silver balloon covered with food lands in the broken glass—boom—chicken and tomato sauce fly everywhere.

My relatives leave, quickly and politely, before midnight. This is about the same time a group of airline flight attendants rip off their uniforms on the dance floor and starting licking each other's bare chests.

A few minutes before midnight, our special clock for the occasion, it stops.

All of this I find out secondhand. All evening, I'm in the lobby welcoming people or saying good night. Famous people get drunk and fight. Gandhi is stalking Ava Gardner. Hirohito is French-kissing Chairman Mao. There's a three-way between Hugh Hefner and Judy Garland and Albert Einstein happening somewhere in the balcony. Somewhere else, Emma Goldman is smoking dope. Then Ray Bolger leaves, weeping her eyes out. Rosie the Riveter is dancing on a table. People appear and disappear, spattered with tomato sauce and laughing. Every wineglass the restaurant owns gets broken. Every votive candle in a glass holder gets broken. On top of all this mayhem, the bubble machines just keep blowing down bubbles. People dance. The movie plays.

After midnight, my first task for the new millennium is to apologize to the restaurant staff. But they say, it's not a problem. They say this is the kind of party they've always hoped someone would throw at the Bagdad.

Instead of regrets, we have tons of good stories and canned tuna. But the dozens of disposable cameras, they've all disappeared. We're left with memories and not a single picture.

Photo Ops: Get Your Picture Snapped at These Landmarks

Just so you have proof you were in Portland... here are some swell local places to use as a backdrop when you say "cheese."

The Bomber

Yes, a World War II B-17 bomber. It's Lacey's Bomber at 13515 SE McLoughlin Boulevard.

The Castle

At the corner of Glen Echo Avenue and SE River Road stand the crumbling ruins of a very swank medieval-style nightclub, complete with towers and battlements.

Giant Candle

As if you could miss it... the world's largest candle is on the north side of Highway 30, at the east end of Scappoose.

Dedicated in 1971, it was renovated in 1997 and its neon flame "burns" night and day.

Harvey the Giant Rabbit

The towering rabbit at Harvey Marine, at 21250 SW Tualatin Valley Highway, started life as a giant gas jockey standing outside a service station until the Columbus Day storm of 1962 blew him over. An expert at fiberglass boat building, Ed Harvey created the rabbit's new head, and according to Portland superstition, waving at the rabbit will save you from a flat tire.

The Naked Bike Race

As if those narrow bike seats don't hurt enough ... At the end of the local bicycle-racing season at the Portland International Raceway, the competitors take a final victory lap—naked. Okay, okay, they do wear shoes and helmets.

Paul Bunyan

He's a giant concrete statue at the intersection of NE Interstate Avenue and N Denver Avenue.

Stonehenge

Built by the railroad tycoon Sam Hill as a memorial to World War I casualties, this is a full-sized concrete replica of the original. Take Interstate 84 east from Portland for about two hours to exit 104. Then turn left, going over the Columbia River to Highway 14. Follow the signs to Stonehenge, a lively place for local pagans during the solstice or eclipses of any kind.

Windmill House

Screw the planning board, the building codes, zoning, and "design review"—it's good to know somebody got to build this giant windmill on their house at SE Ninety-second Avenue and Mill Street.

World's Largest Ten Commandments

It's on SW Dosch Road, just off the Beaverton-Hillsdale Highway.

preserving the fringe (a postcard from 2002)

The trouble with the fringe is, it does tend to unravel. By the time you read this, small parts of it will already be obsolete. People don't live forever. Even places disappear.

My first week living in Portland, in 1980,I called my grandmother for her birthday. This is from a pay phone at the Fred Meyer supermarket on Barbur Boulevard, just downhill from my two-bedroom apartment and stoner roommates. My grandmother and I talk until I have no quarters left, and the operator cuts the line. This is midsentence, and I have no money to call and tell her what's happened.

Instead, I go home and fire up the bong. The big party bowl smokes like a bonfire of dope, and my roommates are in the kitchen, cutting up a little block of hash.

There's a knock on the door, and it's the police.

My grandmother has panicked. Portland's the Big City, and she thinks I was mugged on the pay phone. She's called the police and begged them to make sure I'm okay.

It's impossible the cops don't smell our dope, but all they do is tell me to call home. After a scare like that, the party's over.

This spring, twenty-two years later, I'm writing a check for my grandmother's tombstone. A few stomach pains and she's gone. Like the Church of Elvis and the Van Calvin Mannequin Museum, eventually all we have left are the stories.

Any book is just a collection of short stories, and writing this book, I listened to so many people as they revealed their three lives. Mail carrier—anarchist—minister. Dancer— writer—political organizer. Writer—father—elephant keeper.

As Katherine Dunn says, every corner does have a story.

At the corner of NW Vaughn Street and Twenty-eighth Avenue used to stand the world's largest log cabin, built out of old-growth logs, eight feet in diameter. The size of an airplane hangar, it was built for the Lewis and Clark Exposition in 1905. In 1964 it burned in a mysterious fire. According to Portland architect Bing Sheldon, the 405 freeway was supposed to extend out along the route of Saint Helens Road. The only things stopping it were neighborhood protests and the historic log cabin. "The only reason they didn't move it was that it was so bloody big," Bing says. "The rumor is it was more than likely burned down by the Oregon Department of Transportation."

He says, "That's a bit of urban lore, but there are plenty of people who believe that if ODOT didn't burn it down, then they hired someone to."